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Monday, 8 April 2013

Introduction

The
performing Arts Department at Middlesex University presented a series of two
symposia on the practice of collaboration in performance-making. These events
brought together practitioners, scholars and PhD students concerned with
questions around the impact of collaborative practices in contemporary
performing-arts.

The
premise of this initiative was the observation that while collaboration in
the arts has become a crucial component of the creative process, cultural and
educational policy, it is only recently that an emphasis has been placed on
problematising the influence of co-labour in the disciplines of the performing
arts. The event was informed by the notion that performative art forms can be
seen to have an inherent collaborative aspect but that the role and place of
collaboration in contemporary performance was rarely addressed in the context
of academic research.

The
first symposium on collaboration in performance practice was held at Trent Park
Middlesex on 4 May 2012 and explored a number of critical ideas around the
relationships between collaborative practices and the notions of ‘memory’,
‘place’ and ‘time’ in performance-making.(See tab Symposium I
above).

The second Symposium took place on Saturday, 18 May 2013 at Middlesex
University, Hendon Campus, North London. This event addressed issues specific
to the politics of collaboration.

Questions
of interest included:

• The politics of working
together: relationships between collaborators at work

• Modes of performance-making: the ongoing search for
alternative modes of work